There have been more than 60 deaths at the Tarrant County jail since Sheriff Bill Waybourn took office in 2017. Conditions at the jail are a constant topic of conversation at county meetings, and jail lawsuit settlements have cost Tarrant at least $1.6 million – with more cases pending.
On March 7, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office granted an hour-long interview with the man in charge of day-to-day jail operations, Executive Chief Deputy Charles Eckert. He also gave reporters a tour of the jail facilities in downtown Fort Worth and answered questions about deaths, understaffing and accountability.
Eckert took charge of the jail at the end of 2020, a year when deaths spiked – 17 people died in custody. He’s worked for the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office for more than 30 years.
Deaths in custody
Deaths happen even when guards do everything right, he said.
“As long as they're doing their jobs, we're meeting jail standards and we do everything we can medically, MHMR — people are still going to die,” Eckert said.
My Health My Resources (MHMR) of Tarrant County is the county’s mental health authority and administers mental health care in the jail.
Eckert gave the example of one person who died of stage four cancer while in custody.
For other deaths, there is a chance of prevention. Suicides behind bars are always going to be what concern Eckert the most, he said.
On the same day Eckert spoke to KERA, an incarcerated man named Ronald Reese died in the hospital after he was found hanging in his cell two days prior.
Last year, jailers stopped 270 suicide attempts, Eckert said.
There are some deaths that might not be preventable, but others have happened under suspicious circumstances, where people are alleged to be at fault.
Eckert brought up the death of Javonte Myers, who died of a seizure disorder in his cell in 2020. Myers had serious mental and physical health diagnoses, and he was held in a section of the jail for people with mental health concerns, according to death investigation documents from the Texas Rangers.
Two former jailers face criminal charges for allegedly lying about checking on Myers, updating jail records to reflect checks that never happened.
That kind of behavior from detention officers hurts trust in law enforcement, Eckert said.
“It’s the same as shooting unarmed people,” he said. “If you’re going to not do your job, and you’re going to lie about it, and you’re going to falsify records, that is the type of stuff I cannot put up with.”
But accountability seems elusive for some.
Cory Rodrigues suffered broken bones and a collapsed lung after a jailer beat him in his cell in 2020, according to law enforcement. Last year, Tarrant County prosecutors dropped all charges against the three jailers accused of being involved, without public explanation – a complete surprise to Rodrigues and his current and former attorneys, they told KERA News.
Eckert said he doesn’t control what the DA’s office chooses to pursue, but he will seek accountability for any officers who misbehave.
“It might be just because they're abusing time and attendance. It could be because they cussed out an inmate. I will not put up with that,” Eckert said.
Then there’s the death of Robert Miller in 2019. His official cause of death was a sickle cell crisis, but a Fort Worth Star-Telegram investigation found he didn’t have sickle cell disease. The paper suggested he died because he got pepper-sprayed repeatedly in the jail.
The county promised to hire an outside expert to review Miller’s autopsy, but that never happened. Instead, the county Medical Examiner’s Office doubled down on its sickle cell crisis explanation.
Waybourn told KERA in January he accepts the county’s conclusion.
Short-staffing and a rising population
As of February, the county jail had about 200 open detention officer positions. It’s a longstanding problem that the county tried to address last year with a $37,500, 90-day recruitment push.
That effort resulted in three hires, Eckert said. That’s about 12 grand per new jailer.
“We aren't using that anymore. It just wasn't effective. Why throw money at something that's not working?” Eckert said.
Detention officer jobs can be a hard sell. It’s a difficult and dangerous job with comparatively low pay. Right now, to make up for the shortage, Tarrant County detention officers are working mandatory 52-hour weeks – sometimes more, Eckert said.
There's also the issue of the rising jail population, which puts more stress on the staff already working there.
The jail population reached its highest point ever last summer, at about 4,800 people, and Eckert shut down the jail, he said. He told police departments to hold people in city lockup for a few days until the count went down.
“I'm not going to do anything that intentionally violates jail standards,” Eckert said.
Eckert offered a few possible solutions. There are hundreds of people in Tarrant County custody who have been convicted of crimes and are waiting for the state to pick them up and take them to prison. That doesn’t always happen in the required 45-day time period, Eckert said, and if it did, that would open up a lot of beds.
Eckert also wants a way to make sure people with mental illness, in jail for nonviolent crimes like trespass or making empty threats, don’t walk through the jail doors.
“Do I think there's people that shouldn't be in jail? 100%,” Eckert said. “These are low level offenses. We need to find a way to get them identified, get something done and get them out of the jail.”
Tarrant County does have a mental health diversion center, a place where people can go instead of jail if they’re picked up on a nonviolent misdemeanor and show signs of mental illness. Police can bring people there themselves, or people can be sent there from jail.
The center is not used enough to solve the mental health crisis behind bars, Eckert said. He gave the example of a police officer in a city like Grapevine, making the decision whether to bring someone to the diversion center in Fort Worth.
“Inside their city they've got a jail that they can be at in 15 minutes, or you're going to drive at four or five in the afternoon to the mental health diversion center and then try to get back to Grapevine,” Eckert said. “You're taking the officer's time off the streets."
The county could work to set up a transportation system that takes the responsibility off the shoulders of officers outside Fort Worth, Eckert said.
He also pointed to Harris County, which requires police officers to call the DA’s office to approve an arrest before anyone gets taken to jail.
The population problem – coupled with safety renovations in the jail that will shut down big sections at a time – led the county to pay tens of millions of dollars to house local prisoners at a private prison outside Lubbock, in Garza County. After that prison violated state standards, Tarrant County decided to end that contract early.
If some of the issues that increase the population were solved, Eckert said he could bring everyone back from Garza right away.
Got a tip? Email Miranda Suarez at msuarez@kera.org. You can follow Miranda on Twitter @MirandaRSuarez.
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